Well, my subscription expired. So no pretty thumbs or previews. Just blah blah lists. The last few weeks of working on the Boom site, I've been torn away from this place and I thought when I was free again I'd rejoice in returning. But not so much.

I still like the art. The thing, that probably keeps me attached to comics is the art. The variety of interpretations. The creators vision. I like that voice.

Sadly a voice was taken from us this last week, Mike Turner. I'm not going to profess to know him or even like his style of art. For some reason though it hit me with little effect at first. I didn't even know he was sick or had been fighting cancer for 8 years. I used to keep up with this stuff. I used to be a source, an observer, a commentator. There should have been a nugget in this failing mind of mine that Mike Turner had cancer, that he'd been fighting the good fight. I should have known him for him, and not for his art, which to me was a little too comic booky? I don't even know if that made sense. I guess I never made that connection with him.

When Drew Hayes died, I was shocked even though I knew his lifestyle and health. When Mike Wieringo died I practically wept. I'd met these guys, I'd followed them on their journey. They had been imprinted on my psyche. But when I heard second hand that Mike Turner died. I was distant. I was cold. I didn't know ... him.

I spent the day getting to know him, to know a man I never would in life. Not through his art, I already knew his art, but through his friends. Through their words, their sadness. And I felt loss.

The one thing that has been said about Mike beyond being a consummate professional was that he was full of life. LIFE. Even in death, they look back at the joy and the untrodden desire for life that Mike had.

Roughly 2 years older than Mike and I don't think my friends could say that of me. I've lived, and I live, but I don't think I've ever been full of life. I don't have joy in what I do day to day. Smiling doesn't come easy and I want to smile. I want to feel life.

Death is a somber bedfellow and as you edge through your 30s and beyond, seeing contemporaries die, it makes you think. And it seems like many a contemporary has died in these last few years. Not just the Mikes, but many known and unknown people. It is a rough life and you're only as immortal as the memories you've left behind.

I don't mean to be morose, but I guess it hit me because harder because despite Mike being and having wonder friends, or being a notable person in this profession, I don't see the community mourning. Not like they did for Ringo, who by all accounts was just as much a wonderful consummate friend and professional. Sure it was a bigger shock, but the man left his imprint. His mark is there and I would have thought the memories would be spread far and wide in this community. Maybe I'm missing it?

I also don't mean to use his passing as an excuse, but as an empowerment. I need to find what's going to make me happy and full of life again, if I ever was. I want to take infinite joy in what I do. I just don't know what it is I do?

So I'm going to take off now. Find myself and find my life so that when it's my time to move on for good maybe, just maybe, I'll have left something behind worth remembering if only that being I found life, lived it and loved it.

Thanks for the good times. I'll be watching because art still makes me happy.

Prayers and happiness.

-Ron Phillips
Writer, among other things ...